The company's latest Mobile Mix report shows Apple devices still garnering a commanding share of ad requests, even as Android experiences explosive growth. And the mobile ad business is only getting bigger as smartphones and "connected devices" like the iPad continue to sell.

Like AdMob, Millennial breaks down its data based on the number of ad requests on its entire network. Nielsen says the company reaches approximately 80 percent of the US mobile audience, which gives us the largest data sample outside of Google or Apple.

According to Millennial's latest data, the iPhone still dominates ad requests, pulling in 55 percent of them in July. However, Android is growing with 19 percent of all mobile ad requests, enough to move it ahead of RIM (16 percent) for the number two spot. Windows Mobile, webOS, and other platforms continue to only account for a very small percentage of Millennial's ad traffic.

The mobile ad business in general is booming, judging by the growth in overall number of ad requests. Smartphones now account for half of all ad requests on Millennial's network. Android has experienced explosive growth to reflect its move up Millennial's rankings, with ad requests up a whopping 690 percent since the beginning of the year.

Android's gain in overall share has resulted in iPhone and BlackBerry share among smartphone platforms dropping slightly. Even so, both platforms experienced growth in the overall number of ad requests. Since January, total requests from iPhones have increased 15 percent, while requests from BlackBerrys grew 66 percent.

Connected devices—which include touch tablets like the iPad as well as handhelds like the iPod touch and Nintendo DSi—are also increasingly responsible for ad requests. All such connected devices account for 19 percent of ad requests (with the remainder going to feature phones). Data for the whole year isn't available, but Millennial said that the iPad experienced a 327 percent growth in ad requests just since June, not surprising for a device that has just launched and has sold in limited numbers. With several Android-based tablets expected to launch later this year, connected devices will be an important space to watch.

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Apple will continue to do well with ads for a number of reasons. Everyone focuses on the iPhone, but as this article points out, the iPod Touch and iPad are making iOS unstoppable. Should Apple add iTV to the iOS mix, they will have an unstoppable Ad ecosystem.

There is so much wrong in your statement, I hope you're kidding. The new Apple ToS totally blocks AdMob from running on the iOS platform while avoiding specifying them directly by name. Google on the other hand continues to support an open advertising platform on Android. Yes, Admob has the majority of the platform traffic, but other players in the space include ZestAdz, GreyStripe, and Amobee.

There is so much wrong in your statement, I hope you're kidding. The new Apple ToS totally blocks AdMob from running on the iOS platform while avoiding specifying them directly by name. Google on the other hand continues to support an open advertising platform on Android. Yes, Admob has the majority of the platform traffic, but other players in the space include ZestAdz, GreyStripe, and Amobee.

[quote="cecilroytoo"]@RandomSynapse, AdMob has not been locked out. Third party analytics have been (maybe). There's a difference between locking out the advertisements (has NOT been done) and the tracking (maybe).

While I'm not in the advertising industry, it strikes me as a pretty crippling blow to tell a company essentially: "Yes you can sell your product (Ad views), but you can't track who you're presenting it to, where, when, or on what platform/hardware/OS-version". Given the fact that your ability to market your product is dependent upon your ability to communicate the value you provide, a lack of analytics strikes me as a game-ender.

It seems as if the FTC/DoJ agree, as they've opened an investigation into the subject. Of course, it sounds to be in the very early stages, so perhaps the whole thing will evaporate.

Plotting a growing market with ratio chart (instead of general number) is just dumb!

If you don't have precise numbers for the growth, it may be all you can do.

Still, this type of chart is pretty confusing for this kind of data, and I don't understand why Ars keeps running them. The lines running the way they do doesn't imply that they sum to 100%, and if you have to look at the legend to figure out things like that, you haven't made a very good chart.

A better chart would involve stacking the lines on top of each other, then coloring the regions -- the area between the lines. A chart like that is a lot clearer to read, though I suppose it's possible that it would make WebOS difficult to distinguish.

While I'm not in the advertising industry, it strikes me as a pretty crippling blow to tell a company essentially: "Yes you can sell your product (Ad views), but you can't track who you're presenting it to, where, when, or on what platform/hardware/OS-version". Given the fact that your ability to market your product is dependent upon your ability to communicate the value you provide, a lack of analytics strikes me as a game-ender.

I still remember the days when allowing devices to collect that sort of information was a bad thing, when people generally wanted to be in control of who they give info out to.

While I'm not in the advertising industry, it strikes me as a pretty crippling blow to tell a company essentially: "Yes you can sell your product (Ad views), but you can't track who you're presenting it to, where, when, or on what platform/hardware/OS-version". Given the fact that your ability to market your product is dependent upon your ability to communicate the value you provide, a lack of analytics strikes me as a game-ender.

That's not quite accurate. The ability to track individual users adds ostensibly little value to the advertiser itself. What it does is give an additional potential revenue stream to the network provider by allowing them to collate and aggregate the data and sell it to the advertisers as an additional dimension.

Moreover, by having the raw data first, they can sell this to other data brokers for even more money. This is pure exploitation of such data and provides questionable value to the consumer. Worse, it removes the consumer from the decision chain by opting-him directly into this service, which he may or may not be interested in. Behavioural tracking has always been about maximizing revenue for the network provider first.

The benefits of behavioural tracking to the advertiser has always been more targeted ad impressions, which presumably leads to more effective advertising, and thus better product marketing. The benefit for the consumer, ostensibly, is that he gets stuff he may be interested in. Knowing specifically who or where your punters are is not required for this; only that a targeted ad was shown and whether the user clicked on it.

This is what Apple provides: aggregated data to the advertisers, which is exactly what they need. What it doesn't provide--nor allow--is the correlation of this data to individual consumers for additional exploitation without the direct and express consent of the consumer.

There is so much wrong in your statement, I hope you're kidding. The new Apple ToS totally blocks AdMob from running on the iOS platform while avoiding specifying them directly by name. Google on the other hand continues to support an open advertising platform on Android. Yes, Admob has the majority of the platform traffic, but other players in the space include ZestAdz, GreyStripe, and Amobee.

There is so much wrong in your statement, I hope you're kidding.

Apple's ToS doesn't ban third-party advertising. I see AdMob and GreyStripe ads all the time. In fact, I see more AdMob ads than any other provider.

What it does do, however, is it prohibits non-independent advertising firms from collecting analytics data about Apple's customers through Apple's App Store apps. You know, providing Google (through AdMob), MS (through Massive), Nokia (through Enpocket), Ericsson (through SinglePoint),...etc a giant store of data on who is using an iOS device and what they are using it for. If you own a business, you know that one of your most valuable possessions (and one that you go to great lengths to secure & protect from your direct competitors) is your customer list.

Let us know when Google will allow non-independent advertising firms from collecting analytics data from Google's search results pages, or when MS will allow Sony to collect analytics data from advertising on Xbox Live,...etc.

much of these ads must be served by way of apps (no wonder wired recently had a article chest pounding heavily over the death of the web vs apps), as according to statcounter.com, blackberry is a more used mobile browser in USA then iphone or ipod touch (android is on a steady rise btw).

i can really see how various traditional media/publishing companies are in love with the app concept, as it gives them back control over the presentation. No more ad blockers (had they not gone with intrusive flash ads i dont think ad blockers would have been used as much as they are), web crawlers with quote grabbing (google news), or anything like that. The apps are basically magazines in digital form, but without the risk of over/under-printing a issue. And with a locked down platform like ios, there is little likelihood that someone will enter the ad suppliers into the hosts file.

I'm a bit confused. I can see how this would be interesting to some businesses, especially ad related, but does it have any impact on a user? Is it supposed to indicate some other figures in marketshare or how the devices are used? "Ad requests" mean absolutely nothing to me by themselves.

There is so much wrong in your statement, I hope you're kidding. The new Apple ToS totally blocks AdMob from running on the iOS platform while avoiding specifying them directly by name. Google on the other hand continues to support an open advertising platform on Android. Yes, Admob has the majority of the platform traffic, but other players in the space include ZestAdz, GreyStripe, and Amobee.

There is so much wrong in your statement, I hope you're kidding.

Apple's ToS doesn't ban third-party advertising. I see AdMob and GreyStripe ads all the time. In fact, I see more AdMob ads than any other provider.

What it does do, however, is it prohibits non-independent advertising firms from collecting analytics data about Apple's customers through Apple's App Store apps. You know, providing Google (through AdMob), MS (through Massive), Nokia (through Enpocket), Ericsson (through SinglePoint),...etc a giant store of data on who is using an iOS device and what they are using it for. If you own a business, you know that one of your most valuable possessions (and one that you go to great lengths to secure & protect from your direct competitors) is your customer list.

Let us know when Google will allow non-independent advertising firms from collecting analytics data from Google's search results pages, or when MS will allow Sony to collect analytics data from advertising on Xbox Live,...etc.